Film

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-16T12:27:26.0007Z

I don't know if this applies to other countries aswell, but it might...

It's something very special indeed, and it applies only to "FSK 12": movies that where rated "FSK 12" can get "PG" as addition. Children 6+ can then go to cinema with their parents.

This is explained inthe description of "FSK 12", but would be good to see next to "mimimum unaccompanied age"...

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-15T23:20:16.0007Z

Seems to be a rarity, I think Canada has a strange less than for adult-accompanied age restrictions

See this site for some current rating info worldwide

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-15T23:07:20.0007Z

Hi Johann -- do you know if this is more universal than just Germany? It would be useful to understand what kinds of variants there might be before extending the model.

Film rating: Minimum ACCOMPANIED age in theatres?

2008-05-15T11:44:19.0005Z

It might make sense to have the possibility for an accompanied age aswell:

e.g. in Germany children aged 6+ are allowed to go to 12+ movies in cinema with their parents, though 5 year olds don't

Film: Exporting

2008-05-08T07:18:29.0015Z

I take it back, these have guids instead of compound values.

Film: Exporting

2008-05-08T06:10:51.0040Z

I forgot about data dumps. http://download.freebase.com/datadumps/2008-03-28/browse/film/

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-07T01:53:05.0007Z

Neil Patrick Harris plays himself in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. We could model that as him playing a fictional character named Neil Patrick Harris, who is in turn based on the actor… but “As Himself” is a well-established convention.

On the other hand, when Neil Patrick Harris is on The Tonight Show, he is making a personal appearance, not playing himself.

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-07T00:18:56.0007Z

I wonder if these roles can't just be part of film performance, already it has Himself/Herself (which I am not sure if there is a good distinction between itself and the default Personal Appearance role type).

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-06T23:37:20.0007Z

That is weird. I can't remember our rationale, except that it probably involved the thought that "film appearances" is either too rare a property to put on "person" or would be too confusing, and that we hadn't thought of a good co-type. The personal TV appearance type probably has a similar problem. Suggestions for resolving this would be welcome.

Personal film appearance: As it is, this compound value type seems of little importance

2008-05-06T23:17:22.0005Z

As currently designed, a Personal Film appearence doesn't appear on the person topic and only appears on the film topic (Al Gore for An Inconvenient Truth is a classic example, the only film appearance currently is for a Futurama show).

I've even at times forgotten its there when entering data (THX-1138 documentary springs to mind as a recent example I need to now correct all the acting performances to personal appearances).

Film: Exporting

2008-05-05T19:29:35.0000Z

That's a bug, all right. It's being tracked internally. I'm not award of any workarounds, short of using the API.

Film: Exporting

2008-05-02T05:03:43.0012Z

I tried to export all /film/film as a csv and got only 857 rows of data. Advice?

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-17T17:23:51.0007Z

Thanks Bryan!

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-17T15:03:46.0007Z

It's not expected; I'll try to track down who did the update and let them know.

Film: Film production companies, distributors and other companies

2008-03-17T05:08:52.0007Z

I added these types to the production site and I reciprocated the relationships from the company types.

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-17T01:33:45.0007Z

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the release dates would be added instead of updated. Is this expected behaviour?

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-16T04:11:38.0007Z

Hmm, looks like inital release date is not restricted to one value, and if you look at the history, it looks like mw_template_bot is adding the date instead of updating.

Another good question is, what led you to check out the topic about the movie Gridlock'd!!!

Film: Multiple initial release dates - is this a bug?

2008-03-15T22:50:42.0005Z

Some /film/film instances have multiple values under "initial_release_date" property.

An example is Gridlock'd [ http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000086440a ]

Usually there is a full ISO format date (e.g. 1997-01-01] and a year-only date (e.g. 1997).

Is this a bug? The dates do not appear to be tied to a release in a particular country or anything like that.

Film: Multiple initial release dates?

2008-03-15T22:48:15.0012Z

Some /film/film instances have multiple values for initial_release_date property.

Example is:

Gridlock'd [ http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000086440a ]

Is this a bug? The dates do not seem tied to e.g. a release in a particular country, and generally I have noticed that there is a full ISO date and a year-only date value.

Film: Film production companies, distributors and other companies

2008-03-12T00:06:23.0007Z

Nice. I wonder if it would make sense to create the reverse properties for the production companies, film companies, and film distributors. The reverse on production companies in particular seems like it would be useful; the others perhaps somewhat less so.

Film: Film production companies, distributors and other companies

2008-03-11T22:56:38.0005Z

I added three properties to type Film on Sandbox with several supporting types that cover:

1. Production companies -- this is a simple relationship between type Film and type Production Company.

2. Distributors -- This connects type film to type Film Distributor through a Compound Relationship Type (CRT) called Film-Film distributor relationship which includes properties for the year of distribution, the film cut type (director's, special edition) and the medium of distribution (Theatrical, VHS, DVD).

3. Other film companies -- This connects film to companies other than production companies and distrubutors (which are normally accorded a special status, so therefore singled out.) Type Film here connects to "Film Company" via a CRT called "Film-Film company relationship" which includes properties for the role or service provided by that company and which film cut type it contributed to.

Note here that I'm using a couple of new naming conventions. First, I'm suggesting the use of "CRT" for Compound Relationship Type instead of CVT or Compound value Type. This distinction will become increasingly important in the upcoming months as we bake a deeper distinction between these patterns into MQL.

Second, I've named these CRTs with a new convention that describes it as a relationship between two types. For example, "Film-Film company relationship" connects the types Film and Film company.

Here's a film topic example that includes all three ne properties filled out:

http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000000665b4

You'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the Film section.

Please let me know what you think.

Film rating: Minimum unaccompanied age?

2008-03-07T22:34:03.0005Z

A "minimum accompanied age" property seems useful here, to allow for comparison between the ratings of different countries and to enable searches like "all films restricted to 13-year-olds and older in any country".

Film rating: Minimum unaccompanied age?

2008-03-07T22:29:25.0012Z

Should we add a property along the lines of "minimum unaccompanied age" to make it easier to see equivalence (or lack thereof) between the ratings of different countries? That would make searches like "all films that got a 13-and-up rating in any jurisdiction" possible.

Film: Add Executive Producers

2008-02-05T23:33:33.0012Z

All very interesting items of data you possess.

As I mentioned earlier, we are more interested in helping categorizing and linking datasets, not necessarily in becoming one in of itself. We should take this discussion up with the data-modeling community in the email list I gave a link to above.

As the Film domain is pretty well populated with data and several third party and internal applications built upon the current schema/data structure of film, any changes to the producer or writing types would currently break our API, let alone those outside applications like Cinespin (we are in late-alpha stage of our development cycle and there will be hopefully soon in the future the abilty to more gracefully modify/enhance properties within a schema).

We don't import any data from IMDb (they are a restricted, limited use copyrighted site), we will simply provide a link/key to the IMDb's data on that film, actor, etc. We don't store the whole WIKIpedia article, we have a few lines as a description to help identify the topic, in particular for search/linking purposes (we are not trying to replace WIKI but make it that much more accesable and useable).

If you have data that you think fit within the parameters of Freebase (synopsises, writing creditation types) you could try modeling it in your private domain and on sandbox and then discussing it on the data modeling list and we can see about making it a future part of the relevant domain.

We really appreciate all the interest and activity, we just want to help guide you as the same time you may be helping to steer our development of Freebase into a better fusion of mutual interests.

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-02-05T20:52:23.0007Z

You bring up an interesting problem in our representation of fictional characters. Because "Bob" and "Young Bob" are billed differently, it is clearly useful to enter them that way. However, this creates two different topics for what is really the same character. It would be useful to be able to link these character topics so that we can say that they are different representations of the same character.

Film: Add Executive Producers

2008-02-05T00:40:51.0007Z

I have lots of official text that can be broken down into the schema if the schema exists for it. Production notes, Synopses, character bios, actor bios, crew bios, photos, etc. I wasn't aware Freebase was only trying to link to and not contain data, that doesn't make any sense to me since you can upload images and actually enter data and not just links.

And what about the validity of the data? Does anyone actually care about the validity of the data? I was under the impression the subjective data imported from wikipedia and IMDB was placeholder to aid in building out the database and priming the schema so we could refine it more through these discussions. I have the studio handing me the docs that are used to create the credits that appear at the end of the movie. To me it would seem like Freebase would want to use those to develop a schema for film credits. Is there any value to Freebase in me entering official data or is Wikipedia data what you want?

As for Executive Producer the top credits would always include Executive Producer and Producer as separate billings, but associate producer is one of those ancillary crew credits that may not get special billing and appear like the gaffers and all the other crew.I would reccomend just adding Executive Producer because the problem was people were filling in Executive Producers and producers (Produced by) and both executive and normal producers were getting lumped together under one credit which is not appropriate. For example Mark Cuban may get credited as an Executive Producer because he owns a production company but he's not a producer who actually worked on a film. The opposite of that would be someone who did work on a film getting the same credit as an executive producer. That has the same effect as your boss getting credit for all your work. And again, it depends on how valid you want your data to be. Maybe I'm nitpicking or kibitzing, the reason I bring all this up is because I have formal structured data and I am just trying to enter it but have a couple schema additions preventing me from doing so.

Film cinematographer: Suggest Renaming to DP

2008-02-05T00:05:02.0007Z

I searched all my credit docs issued by the studio I work for and none contain Cinematographer. They all have a Director of Photography though. They also have other lighting roles that support the DP and that's not to mention the whole 2nd Unit crew which includes a 2nd unit DP. 2nd Unit Director seems to get pretty high billing these days.

Film: Add Executive Producers

2008-02-04T23:56:48.0000Z

As for the writing creditation...We currently have film writer and film story contributor...When it's an adaptation (for any media against any media), you add the type Media Adaptation which gives you properties for "based upon" (so that covers I think all of the cases you listed earlier).

As for executive producer versus Assoc. Exec. Producer versus whatever-else producer, we could add an enumerated list property like we have for special performance type for Production Credit. It could list Producer pecking order types like Executive, Associate, etc.

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-02-04T23:54:13.0000Z

It would work the same, either way you'd have 1 character(s) field associated with multiple actor fields. So whether the character is "Group of Men On Corner", or "Michelle Elizabeth Tanner" (Full House), they both need multiple actors associated with them and the character is a unique field.

In my example Group of Men on Corner cannot be turned into Man on Corner #1, Man on Corner #2, etc because that's not how they were credited. I'm not creating or altering data, I'm simply entering it and the schema hasn't supported the data without altering or omitting it. I can't alter it without invalidating the data. That and people get credited in very specific ways for legal reasons.

You bring a good point though which is the case where a single character is represented by multiple actors and each instance of that character needs a unique instance in the database for a profile for example. Another example would be Dr. Who. In my case I haven't had any credits that posed that problem, different aged characters were usually credited as Bob, and Young Bob or Bob at 17 so unique instances always resulted.

Film: Add Executive Producers

2008-02-04T23:42:11.0007Z

How much text are we talking about...The main thrust of Freebase is as a machine searchable location of links to data, not necessarily a database in of itself. That's why we have the keys for Wikipedia and MusicBrainz articles and only a 'blurb' of text to represent that a fuller and more complete text description exists and is reachable through the key. I beleive the same design constraints would be true for a synopsis.

If it were limited to one reasonable length of a single sentence it might be possible for 33,000+ films...But maybe even that would consume too much in the way of our graph's resources? I don't know as of yet...Let me ponder this.

Film cinematographer: Suggest Renaming to DP

2008-02-04T22:03:37.0000Z

In the wikipedia article for cinematographer the role of DP is not always equivelent to that of the C. It notes that:

"The English system of camera department hierarchy sometimes firmly separates the duties of the director of photography from that of the camera operator to the point that the DP often has no say whatsoever over more purely operating-based visual elements such as framing. In this case, the DP is often credited as a lighting cameraman. This system means that the director consults the lighting cameraman for lighting and filtration and the operator for framing and lens choices."

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-02-04T21:29:03.0007Z

Multiple people playing the same character is really a different thing (and should therefore be represented differently) than many people playing many characters who are designated by a single term, IMO. For two people playing the same character, I'd be inclined to say that this should be handled by creating two performance roles for the same character. This is how we've handled the role of Darth Vader in the first Star Wars film.

Film: Add Executive Producers

2008-02-04T21:20:36.0000Z

Thanks. Any of the official publicity materials (publicity, not marketing materials) have been legally cleared for such use. Anyone can make use of the resources so long as they use them for informational purposes and not sold or used to manufacture merchandise. For web sites at most the lawyers contact people when they do not display the appropriate copyright on a photo, but that's even rare these days.

Film cinematographer: Suggest Renaming to DP

2008-02-04T20:52:51.0000Z

Well, the oscar always goes to the voted-best cinematographer. DP might be the title used most often today, but originally that role was usually listed as 'cinematographer' in films in the 1910's-to-1960's films.

We can add 'Directory of Photography' as 'Also known as' for the type...but is that always true? Is the cinemaphotographer always = DP?

Film: Add Executive Producers

2008-02-04T20:25:39.0007Z

Thanks for the comments/questions...These topics may better be served by taking this conversation to the data-modeling list.

The modeling of various written/story/based upon might be a necessary discussion as this involves more than just Film.

Synopsis coming from official sites would be of a restrictive copyright and probably not permissable for us to store (IMO).

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-02-04T04:42:15.0000Z

Another case came up that Group Performance would accomodate but may also warrant further consideration for a special performance type, and that is where twins play a single character. Very often babies are played by twins and a dual credit is provided.

Film cinematographer: Suggest Renaming to DP

2008-02-03T08:16:19.0012Z

I've been entering film credits and haven't seen Cinematographer listed in any of them. Director of Photography is what is typically used. I think cinematography may be used from time to time, but most the DP's are part of a union so I assume the Director of Photography title is official.

Film: Add Executive Producers

2008-02-03T07:58:10.0005Z

I'd like to discuss adding an executive producers (or executive produced by) credit for films. I find that as I go through and enter official credits in existing entries for films often the executive producers and producers are treated the same whereas in the industry they are billed separately to ensure people get proper credit. I have a similar problem with writers (written by, story by, screenplay by, based on a story by, based on a book by, based on a comic book by, based on a documentary by, based on a tv series by, even created by should sometimes be properly credited.

I can point someone to official studio issued credit sheets for films to generate a list of all possible types/field values found across them if someone is interested.

I'd also like to discuss adding more formalized information fields in addition to description. Such as synopses vs description where one is what the film is about and one is whatever came from wikipedia which tends to be what most films have now. Usually the description is too subjective. Synopsis could be more formal and accurate, and even use copy that comes from official sources without people thinking it's fancy marketing copy or hype. That way there's a field for both.

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-01-18T02:29:17.0000Z

Hmm...Group Performance Role. Interesting idea, have to think. I note that for IMDb's entry for Kill BIll the Crazy 88's are individually listed numerically (but only a few of them are listed).

Film rating: Add Rating Reasons

2008-01-17T21:37:46.0007Z

Unfortunately I know exactly what you mean. I have a lot of experience breaking down the versions/language/subtitle variants and there is no standard, it's pretty much all based on what people order from the studios in different territories.

What the studios use internally are the major versions: Theatrical Edit, Airline Edit, Kuwait Edit, Saudi Edit, and then everything else falls under Special Edit, and each of the preceding has a launguage and subtitle variant that only exist if an order is placed for it. So basically there's the Theatrical English language version with no subtitles that acts as the primary version and everything else stems from that on an as needed basis.

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-01-17T21:14:34.0007Z

Non-unique performers or Group performances might be a way to address it. A good example of the problem would be for a film like Kill Bill in which there was a group called The Crazy 88's. In the credits they aren't credited as Crazy 88 #1, Crazy 88 #2, etc, It just says The Crazy 88's and then 88 names.

I have been skipping the credits on those roles for now. It comes up enough that I figured I'd mention it. I'm trying to only enter clean data into freebase and not omit anything from the legally approved official data from the studio.

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-01-16T01:25:34.0007Z

Hey, Jake. I am not sure stunt men are really handled by the film performance type; they are on screen, but it’s different from an acting role. That said, for Doris’s Daughters, I would probably just enter each performance as a different Daughter of Doris (maybe even arbitrarily naming them “First Daughter” or “Daughter № 1”). It’s not perfect, but it does get across that these were discrete roles, if somewhat interchangeable.

Do you have any other suggestions for how these sort of aggregate roles could be better handled? Non-unique performers would be one way to do it, and is worth exploring.

Film rating: Add Rating Reasons

2008-01-13T16:33:18.0000Z

Hi psych0fred:

Good suggestion - we actually thought of this also, but it may involve a little bit more refactoring of the film type; there can be multiple releases for a film, and each release, can have different ratings and different reasons for the ratings.

We post changes to type schems to the developer and data-model list, so you can sign up for these email lists and we'll send out a change notice.

Film rating: Add Rating Reasons

2008-01-13T08:58:50.0012Z

When you look up a rating for a specific film the specific reasons for the rating are listed. For example "This film has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for some prolonged sequences of strong gruesome violence and language." The ability to include this information may of use.

Film performance: Don't Restrict Actor to One Value

2008-01-13T08:35:14.0012Z

I often enter in film credits and come across roles such as Stunt Men that have multiple names associated with them. Since I can't change the way they are credit I just skip them when entering film credits. I thought of putting them under special performances but some aren't, some are just secondary background characters such as Daugthers of Doris with multiple names attached. My only thought is to not restrict it to a single value.

Film director: Multiple Directors for a film?

2007-12-14T17:23:40.0029Z

This change was halted late yesterday afternoon (PST) and will be discussed further as what changes are needed to make as minimal impact upon any applications or mashups. As far as I can tell in my initial investigation, no current application (like Cinespin) uses the current existing IMDb Entry user-created properties in Film or Film Actor. That said, will await any feedback from the community (probably after the new year has come and gone and many of our users no longer distracted by holiday/vacation activities).

One consideration is that an IMDb URI property probably would be better suited as part of Media Commons so as to be used in both TV and Film types.

Film director: Multiple Directors for a film?

2007-12-13T23:30:50.0007Z

Done, the categories in Film that it would make sense to have an IMDb link now have it.

My first use of the new supporting type in a schema ;)

Please let us know if you feel it needs to be added elsewhere within the film domain

Film director: Multiple Directors for a film?

2007-12-12T19:13:15.0007Z

Film director needs an "imdb entry" property.. perhaps you guys can add a "imdb person" supporting type, and move the imdb entry property over to that?

Film: Created a new type (at my significant other's bequest) for Costume Design

2007-09-25T22:31:59.0012Z

Costume Design as a trade is quite distinct from Theatrical Costume Design in areas of responsibility (gentle hint to those responsible for the Theater domain)

All to find a niche for the inestimable Edith Head.

Film: When an actor plays himself...interesting edge case

2007-08-24T23:04:22.0000Z

Actually we are looking at designs for the topic view that will hopefully make it clearer which property comes from which schema. Won't solve all the problems you mention here, but should help.